LEONARD RYSDYK

THE HOLO-MAN

I was a park ranger on El Dorado, a newly opened-up planet eighty light-years
from Earth. There were sixty of us then. We repaired the robots and logged and
loaded samples for the yearly transport back to Earth, but mostly we baby sat
the visitors. Scientourists, we called them. Groundhogs. They logged on to our
virtual reality network by tachyon beam from the comfort of their own living
rooms and told themselves they were going where no one had gone before. All
right: they served a useful function, guiding the remote sensing robots,
supplying the curiosity that the AIs could only simulate, but I had the dream
job. I was really there, on planet, live and in person. I had trained to be a
Ranger, done whatever it took to get off that dying dustbin Earth and come to
the splendors of an unknown world. My life mattered: I was an explorer, an
adventurer. I had it all. Then one day she appeared and my life stopped like a
computer program that just caused a system error. Crash.

The first time I saw her, she was tall and slender with an athlete's body,
perfect glow-in-the-dark skin and a floating halo of light brown hair. God knows
what she looked like for real. She was coming on to me--predictably. No
wilderness adventure was complete without boffing one of the noble-savage
Rangers at the trading post. No skin off my nose. Once things got under way, I
usually put them on automatic and went out for dinner. Getting back, I'd find
two holographic lovers in the monitor, sweating and scrambling on the zero-g
bed. Of course, sometimes I'd stay for the whole thing. Other people's
'fantasies have a torpid similarity, but in the rig you can't tell real from
virtual and a man has his urges.

The next time I saw her, she had filled out. She was more voluptuous and more
muscular as well; her hair was long and auburn, coiled in loose cuds down her
back. The strange thing was that she returned at all. I rarely saw a
scientourist twice. There were a few experts -- UNASA people, academics,
aficionados -- but they found their own way around; they logged on for
knowledge. The others came for thrills. They told themselves they were
performing a public service by guiding remote sensors for the NSI databank, but
they were really just on vacation. jaunting was in. A world a weekend, that was
the thing.

So there she was on Saturday night. I was stowing remotes, assigning robots to
repair jobs and talking to Imogen on audio-only when the woman walked in and
leaned against the high back of my mahogany desk. It's hot in my office, a
tropical scenario. There's a ceiling fan turning overhead, the transient hum of
a mosquito and the deep, humid smell of the jungle. I looked up from the ledger
that is the metaphor for my controls and saw for the first time she had these
deeplypurple eyes. What's she doing back here.? I thought. I was already
involved with Imogen, another Ranger and an actual live woman whose hair wasn't
immutably coiffed, whose breath gave me chills when she whispered in my ear. I
had no time for a groundhog in a baggie. Anyway, one minute I was thinking that
no one has ever come back for me, and the next I was putting a doppel on the
line to Genny and leading this tourist, this virtual woman, into the back room
and lying down with her on sacks of . . . flour? I was making love to a
simulacrum with a passion I hadn't felt since I left Earth and she was calling
my name like it was the name of god and her breath on my neck sent shivers down
my spine and I thought jesus! she has good equipment. White powder rose around
us and the chain tapped against the single bare bulb that was the only light in
the room.

I slipped off the pile of sacks onto the floor. "Who are you?" I asked. My pants
were around my knees but I didn't see her clothes anywhere. She leaned up on one
elbow and looked at me, a flour smudge on her cheek. Reaching out a graceful arm
that was muscled like a dancer's, she touched my face. "Shh," she said and
smiled. Then she disappeared.

Goddamn rude bitch! No exit: zero verisimilitude, like she had switched off her
rig. Not that it's against the rules. Nothing is, except you don't attempt
virtual suicide and damage the remotes or shoot up the territory under
investigation. But switching off! It just isn't done. I zipped up my pants, then
realized I was wasting time, no one was watching me. A red light flashed in the
center of my vision and I remembered I left Genny on automatic. I switched to
audio.

"Are you there, Hideashi?" she said.

"I'm always there for you, kid," I heard myself saying. How long had my doppel
been feeding her banalities, waiting for me to intervene with a decision?

"Yashi, I'm warning you . . ."

"Okay, I'm a little preoccupied, I admit," I jumped in. "Someone crashed a hell
on Coronado, and back on Columbus the repair robot's out of replacement
fasteners and. . . ." I called up the mystery woman's log-on info. She
registered only under the initials "D. D."

"All right, all fight," she said, "but tell me straight, are you coming over
here or not?"

"What, for real ?" I said. I called for the tourist's account info, but all I
got was "Private." Wow. Privacy was expensive.

"'Course for real, you dope. I can have any virtual man in the universe. Goddamn
you tonight."

"Just joking, sweetcakes," I said. "See you in an hour."

"Okay," Genny said, but I could hear the pout in her voice. "Now come on
full-aspect and give me a kiss."

"Anything," I said sweetly and went to automatic. "Smack. Later, babe," I heard
myself say.

When the session was over, I thought about cracking the woman's privacy, but it
would take a while to program a knowhot and I had promised to visit Genny, so I
just knocked off. The machine let me down easy. As the lush jungle odor was
replaced by the dusty smell of my domicile, I opened the back door of my
factor's office. Instead of the storeroom where I had made love to the virtual
woman, there were my cramped quarters. The rig set me on the real floor,
transition complete. I unzipped the baggie, and extricated myself.

It took a while. The suit was my interface between the robots that traveled the
hostile terrain of the planet and my five senses. When I turned my head, a
distant robot rotated its camera. When I reached out my hand, the robot extended
an aluminum arm and, as one, we plucked a flower or grabbed a rock. I heard what
its microphones heard and I felt what its piezoelectric skin felt. When the
anemometer on the robot sampled the wind speed, little cilia inside my suit
tickled my skin. When the robot hooked itself to a hell-tractor, I saw myself
entering an aircar. That illusion allowed computer-generated images to serve as
controls. I could reach out and move a throttle that existed only as an image in
my goggles and a sensation in my glove and control the robot intuitively. More
than being the simplest way to control the hell or any of the tools the robot
carried or even the VR environment itself, these illusions added to an
explorer's sense of reality. El Dorado was not a simulation or a video game. It
was a real place and it was important for the explorer to feel he was really
there.

My equipment was state of the art, so my sense of reality was superb. Most of
the tourists could not afford the equivalent, so they made do with visual and
audio inputs with maybe a power glove for some tactile feedback. On the other
hand, they could get in and out of their equipment more easily than I could.

I lifted off the headset. I pulled my arms and legs out of the pneumatic
activators that sent my motions to remotes and provided feedback. I pulled off
gloves, catheter, and IV, so the suit hung on the cables that allowed me to move
freely without going anywhere. It looked like a scuba diver that had fallen
backwards into the biggest spider web in history. I was back in reality.

Reality! I had been in the baggie the whole Earthly weekend. My head ached; my
vision swam and my knees were so shaky, I banged my shin against the unmade bed.
Covering my eyes, I reeled into the comer, and flicked on the shower. Cold water
shocked me back to my own senses. Toweling off, I swore for the fiftieth time to
wash my limp jeans and T-shirt, pulled them on anyway, and tramped across the
compound to Imogen's.

Beyond the fence, it was night on El Dorado. I stopped under the sodium lights
and sniffed the exotic smells. From the darkness, eyes gleamed at me. The place
was vibrating with life, tingling with strangeness. It gave off the same sort of
nearly erotic excitement as when you walk into a party: all eyes turn to you and
you wonder who you'll meet and what you'll do together. I thought about going
into the dark and looking at the strange stars; I even wandered close enough to
the electrified fence to hear it hum, but -- why bother? The rig took me
everywhere. I hardly ever went out.

Imogen was drying her hair as I entered the two by four plastifoam box that was
her domicile. There was barely space for the door to swing and the bed squeaked
when she plumped down on it to let me in. The room smelled of soap.

"Finally," Imogen said and curled up her legs on the rumpled sheets. She rubbed
her head roughly and her small breasts jiggled. The pink towel hid her face. It
was strange to see a real woman's body. I am so used to people's platonic
conceptions of themselves that blemishes and disproportions-- the birthmark on
Imogen's left arm, her knobby knees--they give megoosebumps. I sat next to her
on the bed and the touch of her damp skin was a tremendous turn-on. I
immediately became excited and we made love in the clumsy way embodied people
do, then rolled apart exhausted. In reality, sex is over so fast.

Genny took my hand and pressed it to her damp chest. The room smelled of sweat
and sex, like nothing I ever experienced with virtual women. They like their
lusts sanitized. My head was still woozy from the physical effort of screwing
when it dawned on me that Genny was talking, saying something about the
scientourist she had shepherded that afternoon.

"'Check the specs,' I told him, but he was a dunce, so I ran that macro you gave
me." She talked fast and the subject and her enthusiasm for it was contagious.
"I followed the tracks over a hill. Hoofed prints, but only one set. Then I saw
it. Big as a hyrax, but so still, its attention fixed-- it was stalking
something." Her eyes widened and she flushed from her chest to her cheeks.

"A hoofed predator?" I blurted out. "A cross-adaptation! That would be like
finding a carnivorous kangaroo back on Earth. There could be a whole new branch
of evolution to discover. Do you know what this means.?"

She smiled at me benevolently, her small eyes blue and bright. "Yes," she said.

"Of course you do," I said. "And I walked all over your story."

"It's fun to see you excited. It's one of your best qualities."

There was an awkward silence while she appreciated me. Awkward for me, anyway.
You want a woman to like you more than you like her m so she stays faithful --
but not so much that she clings. It's hard to keep a lover so delicately
balanced. Finally, I said, "So . . .?"

"I shot a noose, but it wiggled free."

"No!" I lay back, disappointed. "I'd never let it get away, even if I had to
take a static sample."

"My great, non-white hunter," she said. She smiled as she touched my face with
the back of her hand. "I'll go back tomorrow with a trap."

I said, "That's your tenth new-species find, isn't

"Eleventh," she answered. "But who's counting." But she knew I was, because she
said, "It could have been yours. You put me on to the Guerrero region. You could
have followed up, but you went racing off to something else."

"Have you broadcast it yet?"

She shook her head.

"If it had been me," I said, "I would have logged it already."

"I wanted to wait," she said, "until we were together in person. To share it
with you." She's always doing that. Trying to make special moments.

"Oh. Thanks."

Imogen put her arm through mine and said something about moving her stuff into
my domicile. She rattled on about us waking up together, using the same shower,
working side-by-side.

The problem with real women is that they talk even more than virtual ones, since
tourists have to pay for log-on time whenever they're not on assignment and
tachyon transmission costs a bundle. I yessed Imogen to death, but I was
wondering about the virtual woman, why she had come back and why I was so
excited by her.

"So it's settled, then," Imogen said. "I'll move my rig in the morning?"

I didn't know her name; I couldn't even call her. "Sure."

Imogen kissed me excitedly, but I mumbled something about being tired and rolled
over. "Aren't you happy about this?" she said.

"My neck. . . . "I said. You don't realize how much you move your head in real
life until you climb into a baggie and whip heavy goggles around. You can always
tell a VR pro because his or her neck is like a Greek column. "Doesn't yours
ache?"

"Of course," she said. "Good night."

I imagined the soft curls tumbling down her slim neck. Those startling violet
eyes. Why did she just disappear? My mind was whiffing when strong fingers began
unraveling the tangled cords of my neck. "Wow, you're really tight," came
Genny's voice from over my shoulder. I dreamed of the virtual woman as I fell
asleep.

She appeared in the office the next morning. Her silver hair was teased so it
floated around her head like rays of light. Her lips were red as if carefully
made up. Odd. Virtual people don't wear make up; they are made up. I liked the
patterns she had chosen. The floating hair was au courant back home and a
welcome change from the dowdy utilitarian styles of my fellow Rangers. And very
red lips were a particular favorite of mine, a real turn-on. Had she read my
preferences chart? We stared at each other for a while, admiring or sizing each
other up. You can change your appearance in VR, but you can't change yourself.
People's essence always comes through the video buffer. The way they stand,
move. The person behind the persona.

"That was some trick you pulled," I said. I was trying to catch her off guard,
but she took my hand.

I'm sorry I cut you off," she said. "I can explain later, but first take me out
again. Just the two of us."

So much for getting the upper hand. I made the station self-monitoring and we
walked through the door.

Normally, a doppel goes along as the visitors and the cameras fly to their
destination. Our visitors are scientourists, after all. They come to see wide
open spaces, so we fly them out and give them lunch, just like regular nature
guides. Then we let them aim our cameras for us. From time to time, I would
check in to make sure some tenderfoot hadn't gotten excited and overridden
mission specs. We didn't need anybody to re-discover rainbow rocks for the five
hundredth time.

That day, I went along myself. I thought if I could just get her name, then I
could crack her privacy, solve the mystery and forget about her. At first, I
relied on the scenery to do the trick. El Dorado is a wild and beautiful place.
The planet is in its own Pleistocene era with hundreds of species competing for
niches. Right before your eyes, evolution is at work, red in tooth and claw. We
were always on the verge of finding something amazing which makes it a great
place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there. That's why we sent out the
robots. The terrain seems new too, unspoiled and often untrodden. Everything is
sparkling and snapping with vitality and there are sights here like there were
on Earth once, before luxury condos were built on them.

The aircar swept between the snowcapped peaks of Montezuma and Cortez and over
the purple valley at their feet. I waited for her to "ooh" and "ah" like the
others, but she kept her back stiffly straight-- regally, I thought -- and
looked calmly out the window. The aircar turned on its axis to let us look back
and see the falls. They were a klick wide and three hundred meters high. I
caught my breath every time I saw them; Imogen would have been pointing and
noticing things, but the woman was as calm as ever.

Then I remembered that she hadn't come for the scenery; she had come for me. If
I started talking, maybe she would loosen up like Imogen did.

"That's Tenochtitlain Fails," I said, "I discovered them."

"Discovered?"

"Well, me and some groundhog -- tourist, I mean m but it was my mission, my
idea. I named them for the city of the Aztecs." I felt myself getting excited,
and hoped my enthusiasm would be contagious. "That was what I wanted all my
life: to find a new place and give it a name. Put it on the map. I wish I could
tell you what a thrill it is to discover something." I saw that she was looking
at me intently and listening with rapt attention. I fell into her eyes.

Before I knew it, I told her everything about myself, the species I found, the
locations I named, even the trip from Earth and where I came from back home. We
were almost at our destination when I realized I was the one who had been doing
all the talking. I guess I'm more excitable than I am sophisticated.

A little too abruptly, I asked her to tell me something about herself. "I'm not
very interesting" she said.

"Why did you buy all the VR equipment?"

"How do you know I didn't rent it?"

"It's too high quality. You've got stuff on your system even UNASA hasn't got."
I felt a little thrill. I was engaged in a battle of wits, a game of cat and
mouse. Each of us was trying to reveal a little but not too much, to tease and
lead the other on. This was fun. Not like the tedious routines of Ranger life
and love, where everything is understood all at once, a bunch of kissing cousins
in a small town.

"I like to travel and I can afford it."

So she has money. "What's life like at home?"

"Empty," she said, then she caught herself. "Why do you want to know about me.?"

"I need to, if we're going to be more than Ranger and guest."

"Is that what we're going to be.?"

She caught me off guard. I had assumed because she returned, a relationship was
what she wanted. A fling, at least. She sat there looking at me with a
penetrating gaze -- her irises were wide, I noticed. She had excellent,
expressive equipment.

"I hope so," I said. It was usually the right thing to say.

"So do I," she admitted and my heart leaped. She is undiscovered country, I
thought. That was an attraction I would not be able to shake.

At a distance of about eight klicks, we set down in the path of a huge herd of
pachypods. The aircar rose again to hover overhead, and I walked a spiral
pattern, flattening the graingrass to clear a work area for us. As my persona
bent and stretched out its hands, the wiry plants fell away like fainting
moviequeens. In reality, the robot on site had activated a mowing attachment.

The woman spread a red checkered cloth on the ground and unpacked a wicker bask
et. I pressed the start button on a camera and i t whirred off to meet the herd.
When ! bent to program another one, a glint of light made me turn. She sat with
her legs tucked under her on the picnic cloth and was rubbing each piece of
silverware with a napkin before setting it next to a plate. She smiled when she
saw me looking.

"Tell me your name," I said.

As the virtual woman chatted idly, avoiding the question, I heard a distant,
dull thumping, something I had never heard before. ! tried to talk to the
virtual woman, but the banging distracted me. Then I realized what it was:
someone was banging on the rig itself. I set another camera in flight, hoping
the noise would cover me. I put my persona on automatic and unhooked my headset,
pulled the zipper and peeked out of the rig. There was my doppel on the monitor
talking to the tourist and here was Genny pounding on the pneumatic tube that
controlled the feedback to my head unit.

"Genny, what are you doing here?" This was not good timing.

"I'm moving in, remember.?"

"Oh, yeah."

"Why are you setting the cameras?" she said. "That's the tourist's job."

"I have to keep an eye on her," I said. "She's curious, but unstable."

"How do you know?"

I thought fast. "Uh -- she was up here before. Got a real interest in the
planet."

"Is she the one who ditched the sled?"

"What? Oh, yeah! Listen, can you do me a favor? Check her out for me. Somehow
she got on without registering. She's got great software."

"She's got privacy!" Genny looked at the monitor where the virtual woman was
smoothing her skirt. "I'd like to know who she is myself." She got into her
baggie.

"Thanks." Pleased at the irony that Genny would help me find out who her
competition was, I ducked into the bag and back to the virtual woman.

"Make something up," she said.

"Like a pet name?" I said, taking over from the doppel. "Clarissima? Bebe?
Snookums?"

"No, no, no!" She laughed.

"Then you tell me. Something real. Just between us." I was so pleased with my
subtlety I almost burst.

Programmed, the camera hummed like a threatened beehive and took off. Its wash
blew dust everywhere, but she just moved a strand of hair from her face; the
draft hadn't touched her.

"You don't take 'no' for an answer," she said.

I walked toward her. "How can we build a relationship if we don't get to know
each other? Relationship" is a key word for women. Opens them right up.

"What kind of a relationship can we have?"

"Any kind you want."

"I was hoping you'd say that." She rose and walked toward me, her big-buttoned
safari skirt blowing out behind her. She came close. "Call me Dolores," she said
and kissed me hard.

Paydirt! I took her in my arms. Her hands on my back pulled me to her and told
me she was mine. What a prize! Clever, rich, yet her sophistication had fallen
before me like graingrass. That made her seem vulnerable, too, and even more
attractive. I swung her around, reveling in my victory.

Suddenly, I realized her log-on name, "D. D." or "Deedee," was a nickname for
"Dolores." Liar, 1 thought, but no-- she's teasing me. The game is still on.
Then, a light flashed in the center of my vision and brought me back to
business: the herd was coming. I hurried to finish programming the last unit.
When I turned, the woman was sitting on the picnic cloth, unbuttoning her khaki
skirt to reveal black fishnet stockings. Nice! I went to her quickly. She looked
up at me like she was hungry.

I lay down and kissed her. The wind blew her hair against my cheek -what a rig
she had! -- and she pulled my shirttails out of my safari shorts. I rolled on
top of her and through her bones I could feel the oncoming pawbeats. I kissed
her ear and she reached around to pull her hair away from her swanslim neck. I
could hear them now, the approaching herd. '"I want to feel close to you," I
said into her ear. Women love that. They want to know you're thinking of them
when you screw them, as if it mattered. "Tell me your real name."

She drew back, looked at me with her violet eyes. "No," she said. Gravel and
dust were flung on us. And she disappeared.

I fell hard onto the checked cloth and the pachypods thundered around me.
"Bitch!" I yelled.

I switched v/i's. Looking down from the hovering aircar, I saw the herd
splitting around the remote sensing robot that had been me, its aluminum arms
still raised in a gesture of anguish. The shot was too tight, so I flew higher
to capture the full pattern of the mating dance. The herd made intricate
curlicues, the animals forming triads, robbing shoulders and shaking their
heads. I zoomed in for closeups. It would have been something to see, if I
hadn't been so pissed off.

I was too much of a pro to set the cameras on auto, pull out and go back to the
station. I stayed to finish the filming and collect the equipment -- the
tourist's job -- and get the aircar headed to base, but as soon as I was back at
my desktop, I called Imogen. She'd be in her rig, only a few feet away, but no
closer than in virtual reality. She might even know who the mystery woman was by
now and if she did, I was going to ban "Dolores" from the entire interplanetary
VR system. I was boiling over with anger and lust and could not call Imogen up
fast enough. She appeared at her desk wearing her blue blazer. "Hello . . ." she
said and looked blank for a moment -- what the hell, I thought, a recording?
--then blinked as the proper subroutine kicked in, ". . .Hideashi. My stuff's
moved in-- what a mess! And I tried to check on that tourist, but all the
pathways were blocked. She must be some rich bitch. Or maybe she's somebody
important playing hookey from work. I'm really suspicious, but I could only take
one try before I had to fly to Balboa to repair the maintenance robot. I'm in
transit, now. As soon as I can, I'll get on-line from there. I miss you!" She
blinked back to the original program. "Do you have any further message? Thank
you for calling."

"Damn!" I said and slammed my desk so hard the inkwell fell to the floor and
shattered. I kicked the fragments and got black stains on my kneesocks. Then I
calmed down and reversed the simulation to clean up the spill -- I wasn't going
to get down on my hands and knees to clean up a virtual mess. There was no sense
shutting down if Genny was going to call, so I took a deep breath, checked the
other remotes and put in a sleep tape.

Kisses woke me. Genny was leaning close, stroking my hair. I inhaled, hoping for
perfume, but all I got was the polyethylene smell of my own inhaler. Genny was
in the bush and didn't have all her options available. Nevertheless, her eyes
were more blue, her hair more blonde than when I last saw her, and the body that
pressed against me was softer and rounder than her real one.

"Did you find anything out about the tourist?" she said in her huskier-than-real
voice.

"Forget her," I said and took Imogen in my arms. "I wanted the real you
tonight," I said passionately.

"I couldn't help it, honey." We clenched and kissed, but when I rolled on top of
her, I remembered how I had been dumped in the dirt that afternoon. I bit
Imogen's neck hard. The robber squeeze ball in my feedback unit tasted bitter,
but not enough to break the illusion.

"Oh, my!" Imogen gasped as the impression of my teeth activated tiny needles on
her unit's collar. She dug her nails into my back. "Damn this second-rate
unit!"'

I felt a vibration in my ear, but kept kissing Imogen, wrestling her into
position. The tickling grew more insistent; my audiophone had an emergency
message. I reached out until the hand in my rig keyed the menu that floated at
the top of my vision when no other metaphor was available. I pushed "Slow,
Romantic" under "Macros" to put Genny on automatic and take the call.

"Hello," said the virtual woman's voice.

"How the hell did you get in here?" I said, my finger on "Disconnect." "I
couldn't stop thinking about you," she said. "And I couldn't figure out why I
ran away. I could have gotten out of the rig. I could have watched you in the
holograph monitor and laughed while you did it with my doppelganger."

Damn, she knew all the tricks. "Just tell me how you got on my emergency channel
--"

"My system's loaded. I have override programs, priority protocols."

"You goddamn rich people."

"Listen. I admit I lied to you on the prairie, but I knew right away you saw
through me. You're smart and I was scared. I've been looking for a man like you
through all twelve discovered planets, but you know how it is when you find what
you want. You get scared. Now. . .I want to share myself with you, my real self,
like you wanted. Yet I've been so rude, you might never want to see me again.
Just say so and I'll go away forever. But I had to tell you."

All this on audio, not even a hologram of her to look at. "Hold on," I said. My
doppel had just gotten out of bed to light some candles. I pulled this program
from a how-to manual; it didn't miss a trick.

Normally, I would have kept affairs going with both women-- the good thing about
VR is you don't have to make choices-- but with Imogen moved in, things were
going to get awkward. Luckily, she was away now or the whole conversation would
be on the monitor for her to see and I had no way to shut it off; it's a safety
device. No way around it: I was going to have to dump one or the other and that
was always ugly.

Not that I hadn't done it before -- I was an expert. But my last night on Earth
I had an experience that still made me flinch. I had been living with an
actress, a French woman, full of naked passion. I hadn't told her when I was
going to leave -- I see that as a mistake now, but I liked a quick clean break.
That was my style. The time came-- she went wild. It was horrible. Her eyes
bulged. She grabbed her head and crouched over like she was getting ready to
leap out of her body. I had never seen a human being act this way. Then she
clawed at me. Begged and shrieked, "Don't leave me!" Her face was swollen, red
and teary and the noises that came from her throat, like from a wounded animal.
Then she sank to the floor and got real quiet. I relaxed. Suddenly her hand was
in the drawer and she had a kitchen knife as big as her forearm. I grabbed her
skinny wrists. She was hysterically strong and I felt the small bones of her
thin arms twist in my hands as I overpowered her. The neighbors burst in and
broke us up. I never knew whether the knife was for her or me. With all those
people staring at me and her sobbing on the floor, I almost threw up, it was so
embarrassing.

My choice now should have been obvious. Imogen was sweet and dependable and as
the top two explorers on planet, we had a lot in common. But the virtual woman
was going through a lot of expense just to see ME -very flattering -- and she
was promising to open up. In VR, you can always wear a mask, but she was willing
to bare her soul. That touched me. And I wanted to see what her bare soul looked
like -- while I kept my mask on. Finally, it was smart politics to let her down
easy. Everybody knew what went on in VR, but it was not cool to get complaints
about your social dealings made to UNASA. So half out of caution, half out of
temptation, I decided to play along.

I pulled up a subroutine that interpolated my doppel into another program. The
instructional tape would run for hours. The program clicked in and my doppel
flickered a little as he came back to the bed. Damn glitch! I zoomed in to see
if Imogen noticed, but her eyes shone from the candles like she was in love.
Perfect!

The woman was sitting on the edge of a rattan chair in my office. In a short
plaid skirt and white blouse, she had dressed the part of a penitent schoolgirl,
though her kneesocks covered the tapering calves of a mature woman. She reached
out tentatively and I took her hand.

"Come on," she said.

She led me through the doorway into a dark corridor where the storeroom had
been. There was no reason why such a corridor should be in my supposed factor's
building, but we were still on my system: transitional sequences were a rule. We
walked past torches set in widely separated sconces until we came to a long
flight of stone stairs. Our footsteps echoed as we climbed until finally we
emerged from a subway entrance onto a city street. It was night. The air smelled
of rain and the wet asphalt reflected the streetlights. A dialog box popped up
to tell me we were off my system now and onto hers. I held her hand more
tightly.

"Where are we?" I said.

"Flushing," she said. "New York, East America. This is where I grew up." We
walked past ground ears that held sleeping people, whole families, it looked
like. The place resembled my old hometown of Toronto. The decay was why I left.
Then the scene changed suddenly as we turned a corner.

"That's my old high school," she said. "Tough territory." The building obviously
had been bombed. We turned a comer where a chain link fence protected a
tumbledown brick building. "My grade school." This trip down memory lane wasn't
what I expected and it was depressing me. I wanted to know where she lived now.
Claws restled on broken glass below windows so mined even the mullions were
gone. I wondered about Genny and how much time was left on the tape. Heads
turned as we walked. The few people we passed weren't used to seeing remote
camera units rolling down their streets. This area was completely forgotten,
even by VR. Around another corner and we stood before a burned-out building that
leaned over like a crashed face. "And this is my old house."

"What a dump," I said. I stumbled over something soft, but didn't look down to
see what it was. "I got the impression from your equipment you were rich."

"I made my money the old-fashioned way," she said and smiled. "I married it."

"You're married?"

She pulled me on. "One more comer," she said and the world changed. A bright
building of glass rectangles rose above squalid row houses. She must have a
dozen remote units scattered around the city. Or she had recorded this earlier
with one remote -- either way, she had planned it all. So much for baring her
soul, but what was she up to? Whatever it was, I wasn't enjoying it. I needed an
exit line.

"That's the hospital where I was born," she said. "Look: sixth floor, on the
end. There's a light. Where my mother first held me." In the light reflected
from the building, she looked like she was glowing with the warmth of her
memories. "It's a seniority home, now, full of old people, withering, dying,
wishing to be young and beautiful again, even for one last moment."

It all made sense now. She was like those people, only richer, and her last
fling was to use VR technology to lead me on a chase. What did she want -for me
to fall in love with her? She had played well, I had to admit; she had me
fascinated or I wouldn't be here, but I saw my way out.

"Let's go up," I said. "Maybe you know somebody there and could say something to
cheer them up."

She shook her head. "No. That light means someone can't sleep. There's too much
pain in her body, or too many bad memories."

I caught the clue and it made me feel sorry for her. It was her in that room.
Through her bit-mapped schoolgirl's skin, I saw a wrinkled hulk working the
actuators with withered limbs, straining with her last strength to act as young
as she made herself appear. The person comes through the persona.

"Why are we here, Dolores?" I emphasized the word to remind her she had not yet
told me her name as she promised.

"I wanted to show you my life story, from the cradle to the -- present." She
leaned against me, soft and tall. "But I have one more place to show you to
bring you up to date."

I started to refuse, but suddenly the sidewalk was gone and my bare toes were
wiggling in the damp sand of a moonlit beach. Waves crashed and my breather
pumped in salt-scented air.

Before us stood a huge beach house. It was one of those things you see in the
movies. Modernist, with curving balconies and glass block walls. She led me
inside, over tile floors, past a little fountain and through living rooms as big
as basketball courts. If this were real, it must have cost even more than her VR
rig. We went through sliding glass doors big enough for an airplane hangar and
onto a wooden deck. Below it, a beach sloped gently from the house toward the
shushing sea.

"This must have cost a mint," I said turning and craning my neck to take it all
in. "But it makes me wonder: what about your husband?" I didn't mention that she
had skipped a large piece of her life-- everything since high school. Unless she
expected me to believe she was a recent graduate!

"My husband died here, on a night like this." The wind blew the ends of her
white lace skirt. "He was a theatrical producer. Live theater is all the rage
now, did you know?"

"Of course," I snapped. What was I, a rube?

"I lived through him: his money, his friends. After he died, I bought the rig,
to travel, to lose myself. But really, I was looking -- and I found you."

She looked at me a long time, smiling like the Mona Lisa. I had the feeling she
was not trying to think of what to say, but was turning over words she had
rehearsed, savoring them deliciously before she made them known. "I love it
here," she said softly, "but it's empty and I'm alone." Slowly, then, she leaned
against me and rested her hand on my chest. "Come and live here with me. I mean
it! Not in VR, but in the flesh."

I shook my head; I almost laughed. "I'm a Ranger," I said. "I spent my whole
life trying to get away from Earth!"

"I know it's crazy, and I expected you to say no. But that day in the aircar,
when you talked about adventure -- you were overwhelming. There aren't any men
left like you on Earth, they've all gone to the planets. Compared to you, there
are no men left here at all."

"What would I do on Earth?"

"I've thought it all through. You could give lectures. No Ranger ever comes
back. I know agents and managers. They could promote you-- a one-man show. You'd
be a star!"

I saw myself for a moment standing before an audience, hundreds of people
hanging on my every word and in the end applauding. The fame. The money.

It didn't seem likely. And she wasn't going to spill, so it was time for the
kiss off. "You've forgotten one thing," I said. "We're not on a dating network.
We are eighty light-years apart."

She leaned up to me, her red lips parted with excitement, her violet eyes wide.
I could feel her breasts heave as she whispered, "You could come in the sample
ship."

"Well!" I said and tried to turn away, but she gripped my arms. "It would take
over a hundred years!" I said. "I would be traveling at near-light-speed, so I
wouldn't age much, but you would. Neither of us has that kind of time." I had to
get in that little dig, but if she was old as I thought, she gave no response.
She might have been an actress herself once, she had such good control.

"I could put myself in deep freeze," she said excitedly, "like people who have
an incurable disease. I can afford the machinery and I can afford to find a
doctor who would do it." I shook my head and tried to pull away, but she held
tighter with her little hands and thin arms, and pleaded. "We'll take a chance
for one another. When you get here, it'll be like we're giving each other a new
life."

Maybe I just got caught up in her enthusiasm -- it was contagious -- or maybe it
was temptation pure and simple. If not for the sheer physical distance, I might
very well want to cash in my contract on El Dorado and retire while I was still
young to lead a rich life with a passionate woman. The luxury-- the sex! But the
fact was, "I have a planet to explore," I said. I'm not sure I said it
convincingly.

She folded her arms and pulled away. "But you never actually go anywhere, do
you? You explore, but you're always safe in your rig. Here I'm offering you real
adventure. Aren't people more interesting than places? Think of all the people I
could introduce you to. Think of me."

I didn't have any answer for that. No exit line, no excuses and it dawned on me
I was in real trouble. I was out of contact, on someone else's system. I had to
get out without offending her or she could complain to the UNASA officials.
Inquiries, reports. I would be a laughingstock. I could not just switch off as
she had done.

Oh, hell, make a move, I thought. Call her bluff. I said, "Let's do something to
prove to ourselves we're doing the right thing. We don't want to make a life
decision based on a computer-generated dream."

"What do you mean?" she said.

"Get out of the rig. Let me see you off-line, through the remote sensor. Then
I'll step out and show you me. We'll be honest with each other and with
ourselves." I liked this speech. I almost believed it.

There was a silence, then she said, "Give me a minute," and the screen went
blank.

Perfect! She switched off again, I thought. Her old trick. That would end it,
point, set, match. I outfoxed her. When I tried to switch back to Imogen,
though, I found I was still on the virtual woman's system and it wouldn't let me
out. HA! She'd run so fast, she forgot to shut down. Well, I'd give her a
minute, then shut down myself and start back up on my own system. I'd go back to
good old Imogen, plain old, real old Imogen -- or she would be real when she got
back, at least. While I waited, I wondered who the virtual woman was and what
she really wanted. That bit at the seniority home was probably right. Some rich
old dame looking for one last fling. How transparent. Of course, a rich woman
wouldn't be at a home like that one and all her equipment told me my little
flirt was as rich as she said. I could be sure of that. Or maybe she wasn't old.
Maybe it was any woman looking for an affair and using her equipment and her
cleverness to add spice. What a pair we made, the king and queen of VR foolery.
It was a shame to waste such talent m she had talent, after all -- on a mere
dalliance. And I should get back to good old Imogen . . .

"Here I am." We were on the beach behind her house. On my face, I could feel the
cool wind blown in from the water; light came from over my shoulder. The huge
windows illuminated the sand. Their light shone on the luminescent paleness of
her naked body.

She was not young. Forty maybe. But she held up well, like those French
actresses who get better-looking as they develop more character. No, she was not
young. But she was beautiful.

Her hands hung at her sides and her toes twitched in the sand. "Well?" Her waist
and legs were long. Her hips were no wider than her shoulders and though her
calves were sculpted like she worked out on a weight machine, the flesh on her
ribs rounded over her bones. Her breasts were not firm, nor quite the same size.
There is something about a real woman. . .

"Turn around," I said. I'll be damned, but she did it. What I really wanted,
though, was a moment to check my system. I shut off my microphone and queried
the source of the signal coming from Earth. "Remote sensor. Live transmission.
Unenhanced." So it was genuine. But I didn't need to check. There on the back of
her thighs were the little crinkles of cellulite that only reality would think
to put there. No programmer would. Certainly no one who was programming her own
looks could be so without ego as not to smooth out her buns. I would have. That
cellulite had to be real, so she had to be, too. I zoomed in. Though it was
dark, I could see she had freckles across the back of her shoulders and streaks
of grey in her copper-brown hair. She had really bared herself to me after all.
I was stunned and terrifically turned on.

Then it dawned on me, that the explanation might be the simplest of all: that
she was genuine, that everything she said was true, and that she wanted me just
for myself-- for the person that I am, for MY essence --and not the distance nor
anything else mattered. And why not? Passionate and egotistical, we loved our
little VR games. We were made for each other. All my life I had been taught
that's how love works.

She finished her slow turn and said, "Do you believe in me now?" She put her
hand on her hip.

"You're beautiful," I said. "Now, it's my turn --"

"Come and get me," she said. She turned and bounded across the sand, not with
the long-legged nimbleness of a simulacrum, but with the stagger and bounce of a
real woman bounding over the unevenness of real sand in the half-dark. The sea
whispered and glimmered and I heard her splash into the waves.

Did I need more proof? Well, here it was: She trusted me! ME!

I had to think to make it sink in: On Earth, she was a real woman, but I was a
remote-sensing robot with camera eyes and aluminum limbs. At great expense, I
was customized to sense every type of experience as the sand under my
piezoelectric feet told me. Yet she wanted me, this robot, to come after her in
the sea -- to make love to her? The illicit pleasure made my mind spin. To
copulate with a robot -- but no: in her mind, she would be making love with me,
the man she loved. I hurried down the beach.

She was a streak of luminescence in the surf. I swam to her-- this robot could
swim! The water felt cold between my legs and in the rig, my scrotum tightened.

I swam to her and put my arm around a waist that felt soft and slender. She
threw her arm over her head and took a stroke back from me. I followed, still
touching her. I'm in love with her, I thought, and repeated it like a drank. As
the sea rose, I pulled myself into her more urgently than ever before. She
gasped and dug her nails into my back.

Then I remembered Imogen.

I put the remote robot on automatic and rushed back to my office. My hand was
over Genny's eyes. She giggled and twitched as I tickled her navel with a damask
rose. I entered the perception and switched off the macro.

Her hands were soft against my back. She had the gentlest touch of any woman I
ever knew, even when she used the machine. Her lips were moving and as I bent
close, my unit controller turned up the volume in my earphones. Almost silently,
she was whispering my name.

I leaned away. "Genny," I said. "I can't go through with this." Her eyes widened
and she looked at me like she had suddenly sobered up. This was going to be
difficult. I had trained her when she landed, and she learned like she was
absorbing my mind. We had come together slowly over the two years we had known
each other. First as colleagues, then as friends and only then as lovers. I had
never done it in that order before. The lover part usually wore out long before
friendship had a chance.

She laughed. "You can't be impotent in virtual reality!" she said.

I hesitated and while my simulacrum stared at her, I checked the tab to see when
that cargo rocket was leaving. Tomorrow! I would have to do it now. A memory of
thin arms trembling with hysterical rage raced across my brain, but I was safe,
now: safe in virtual reality. Genny was half a world away.

"That's not what I meant," I said. Just take it slow. Easy.

"Genny, have you ever thought about going back?" She sat up, her small breasts
settling on her slender chest. "I mean, what good do we do the people on Earth?"

"What are you talking about, Yashi? I thought you hated Earth."

"I was just thinking is all."

"Anyway, I like it here. I like the adventure, the discovery, the open spaces."

"But aren't people more interesting than places?"

"What?"

Oh shit, here it comes. "I have to leave you, Genny."

Her jaw went slack and she shook her head slowly. After a minute, she said, "The
tourist. Oh, I get it. You're feeling cramped. I moved in and you panicked. You
want to get me out of your domicile." She sat upright and leaned over me, her
strong body like a steel spring. "Well, it's not going to work. We have
something going here -- I love you. There, I said it; it's recorded on the
system. And it's going to take more than a fling with a virtual woman or
whatever other lame excuse you cooked up to make me give up on you." Her eyes
narrowed and her nipples were firm as periods.

This was worse than the actress. All she had done was try to kill me. Imogen was
actually making sense. We did have a relationship; I had never had one of those
before. Pretty soon, the other Rangers would start talking about me as "Genny's
man." We'd show up at parties together and go home together, too. The same home.
Then, we'd get married. The other Rangers would recycle some plastifoam into a
larger house for us. We'd have kids. All the virtual woman wanted was for me to
give up my career and travel across eighty light-years of hard vacuum. Hell, I
had done that before. For the first time in my life, I was scared.

"Hideashi, tell me what's on your mind. It's okay to say you're afraid." God!
She even knew what I was thinking. "It's scary for me too. You're not a prize
catch, you know, but it was meant to be. You get a hunch; I see it through. We
complement each other."

I had never thought about it like that before. I only knew I had to get out of
there. "Imogen, I meant what I said. I really am leaving you. I am cashing in my
con tract and taking the sample ship back to Earth. Yes, I'm going to that woman
you saw me with."

Imogen's mouth dropped open like a cargo ramp. "You're going to Earth?" I
started to explain how I would give lectures and write books. She grabbed my
head in her two hands and shook it.

"Who the hell needs lectures when we have virtual reality?"

I mumbled something about being a sort of romantic figure, a role model.

She took her hands away. "Hideashi, I have never seen anyone so afraid of a real
relationship. Look, I can move back to my place. We can go slow. You can have
your VR fling. But please, don't go off half-cocked because you're getting in
too deep with me."

I didn't like that. I mean, some of what she said was true, of course, but some
of what I said was true, too. The virtual woman was the most exciting,
mysterious and passionate woman I had ever known in reality or elsewhere -- and
there had been a bundle, let me tell you. And I did want to go to Earth. I
wanted that house and the money she offered and the fame I might get. I told
Imogen so.

Perched on her knees, she drew toward me gently, slowly, moving her head to look
into my eyes as if she were trying to get into position to examine my soul.

"Don't go," she said softly, with a conviction I had never heard in anyone's
voice before. "You don't know her. She could back out at the last minute. And
you can't guarantee what will happen when you get there."

"I'm not going for the guarantee, Imogen," I said. "I'm going for the
adventure."

She let go of my head and pounded her fists on her knees. "Stupid man!" she
shouted. "At least say you're going for love."

I thought about it. "That too," I said, "I'm going for love."

"Wait until her security fails," Imogen pleaded. "I've got a knowbot on her
trail right now. It'll break through any minute."

"The sample ship leaves in the morning. The next one's not for a year."

Imogen said, "Well, if this is a trap, she's got perfect timing. She really
knows how to pull your strings, Hideashi." She sat crosslegged and pulled the
sheet up to her chest. "I wish I did."

A tantrum I was ready for. Blows. Recriminations. But Imogen wasn't even crying.
"Are you all right?" I said.

"I can take care of myself," she said, but not like she was looking forward to
it. There was a long silence. The hurt hung between us like the cold, dark
places between the stars. Long after I thought I couldn't take it anymore, she
said, "Now, one of us had better go."

"We're in my domicile in VR," I said, "but if you want to break the illusion --"

"No, I'll go." She got out of bed, holding the sheet to her chest, trailing it
along the floor. She hesitated at the door. A light glistened on her cheek; out
at Balboa, her system did not have the graphics capability to hide her tears.
She went through the door and off-line.

I tried to switch back to the beach, but the robot was no longer available. My
doppel had probably wrapped things up for me. As soon as I returned to my
office, I checked the tab for a note from Imogen --nothing -- then punched up
the administration BBS to waive my contract. I found the sample ship was leaving
within the hour. Where had the night gone? Those women had kept me hopping.

I shut down so fast my head swam and I ran out the door with just the clothes on
my back. Since Imogen had taken the aircar, the only way I could get to the
ranway was with the cargo on the rollagon. I leaped on top of the load as a
robot backed away and we rambled off.

As I looked back, the gate swung itself shut; the domiciles looked small and
they receded quickly. Between the compound and the runway fell the shadow of the
trees and the draft of our motion sent a chill up my spine. I wondered how that
knowbot was doing. If I only knew for certain whom I was dealing with -- but
when I called Imogen on my pocket phone, all I got was her answerer. Whether
that meant she didn't have anything to tell me or that she was holding a grudge,
I couldn't say. I only knew my heart was beating with excitement like I couldn't
remember when.

The scramjet appeared in the clearing and the rollagon stopped. I climbed down,
entered the cargo pod and strapped into a couch. Including catheter and
intravenous, I had to plug into the pod almost as thoroughly as into my rig--I
was going to be in that seat a long time--but there were no VI inputs, just the
holographic monitor of a videophone. There was nothing virtual about this
reality.

We tore out of the atmosphere with a bonecrushing slam. In orbit, the
microgravity made me nauseated, but I switched on the holophone immediately. I
had a feeling there would be a call.

The violet eyes of the virtual woman appeared. Her face was radiant. "I'm at the
hospital," she said. Her hair was pulled back and flecked with grey at the
temples. Wearing a high white collar, she appeared angelic. "Did you resign?"

"My notice is filed and I'm already in orbit," I said. "I'm on my way to you!"

"I knew you couldn't resist," she cooed. My heart leaped with love.

Just then, the screen forced up a message marked "URGENT." I had to put the
virtual woman on hold and Imogen appeared. Her small blue eyes were fixed on the
camera and her face looked thin and strong, as it did in reality. "I've been
busy since you left," said her voice, a recording, "and I have a few surprises
for you. First, the knowbot unlocked your friend's files. Does 'Yvette Sabot'
mean anything to you?"

The actress. It explained everything. That was Yvette's essence I had seen: in
the angle of her head, the slant of her hips. That explained the attraction I
felt even for her virtual persona. And why she knew exactly how to play on my
affections. But I didn't get it. Yvette hated me. Why would she want me back?

Imogen's recording went on: "She's old, Hideashi. Her kidneys are gone; she'll
be dead when you arrive. Incidentally, she's as rich as you thought."

But if she's going to die . . . ? Then I understood. Old and bitter, close to
death, Yvette was using VR to settle the score. Her plan worked: I was on my way
to a woman who would be long dead when I arrived, alone and penniless, in a
world I had once struggled to escape. Had Imogen called just to gloat? It wasn't
like her. But wait: Yvette and I had broken up eighty, ninety years ago. She
lived a whole life while I was suspended in time on the transfer ship, a life
full of its own triumphs and sorrows. I couldn't believe that anyone could keep
pain alive for so long, or that I was the victim of an elaborate hoax. Imogen
must be wrong. The virtual woman couldn't be Yvette.

The recording continued. "Now the good news. I hacked the navigational
computers-- you taught me well-- and managed to save your life. The cargo pod
didn't separate and rendezvous with the NLS shuttle. It'll stay with the
scramjet and the transfer ship will return empty."

But I had quit! The cargo was expected! "What have you done?" I yelled at the
recording.

"You're in a pretty extreme elliptical orbit -- sorry, I was rushed. But you're
such a programming whiz, Hideashi, I'm sure you can figure a way down. It'll
take time, but you need a chance to think things over. Call me when you land, if
you have anything to say. Here's a hint: start with 'Thank you."

"Thank you," my ass! That ripe bitch had ruined everything. To keep me on El
Dorado, she must have cooked up the story from my personnel file: that's where
her knowbot had been sniffing. An ex-lover's revenge -ridiculous! But was
Yvette's name even in my file? The "URGENT" override released my screen and the
virtual woman reappeared.

"Something wrong?" she asked. Her mouth didn't move when she talked, as if she
were speaking through a mask. The elliptical orbit carried me so high, the
computer froze her picture to enhance the weak signal, filling in the blanks of
the data stream it received from a receding ground station.

"Fine. I'm about to leave orbit," I said. She smiled, relieved.

"Do you still want to know my name?" she asked. Twice each second, a scan line
updated the picture. Now, wrinkles appeared around her eyes. Now, her lips were
without color. I began to recognize features I hadn't seen since I left Earth.

"Because I can tell you now," she said. "I don't mind."

Yvette. She had conned me, cornered me and nearly captured me, but why give her
the satisfaction? "It doesn't matter," I said. A scan line changed her eyes from
violet to dishwater grey. "What matters is, we'll be together."

She said slowly, "I've waited so long for this moment." And her laughter rang
like music played on crystal spheres.

After she disconnected, her image faded and the monitor showed my own face, how
I appeared to others on-line. I had dark circles under my eyes. I looked tired
and lost. When I didn't move, the holophone assumed I was done with it and shut
down. My image faded and the screen went blank.